Randomized Evaluation of Institutions: Theory with Applications to Voting and Deliberation Experiments

in

DRI Working Paper No. 54
By Yves Atchade and Leonard Wantchekon

Randomized Evaluation of Institutions: Theory with Applications to Voting and Deliberation Experiments
We study causal inference in randomized experiments where the treatment is a decision making process or an institution such as voting, deliberation or decentralized governance. We provide a statistical framework for the estimation of the intrinsic effect of the institution. The proposed framework builds on a standard set-up for estimating causal effects in randomized experiments with noncompliance (Hirano-Imbens-Rubin-Zhou [2000]). We use the model to re-analyze the effect of deliberation on voting for programmatic platforms in Benin (Wantchekon [2008]), and provide practical suggestions for the implementation and analysis of experiments involving institutions.